Digital Lifelines Scotland seeks to improve digital inclusion and to design digital solutions that better meet people’s needs, to improve the health outcomes for people who use drugs, reducing the risk of harm and death.

Maguires were appointed to create a modern and dynamic brand to help DLS continue its valuable work in both the digital and physical worlds.

At the heart of the new brand marque are subtle references to the letters ‘d’ and ‘l’ encased within a series of interconnected curves. As Digital Lifelines Scotland is funded by Scottish Government and run as a partnership programme, these curves are designed to represent both the collaborative make-up of DLS, as well as the supportive nature of their work. The overall visual effect of these interconnecting curves provides the new brand with a distinct digital ‘fingerprint’ marque, with the line forms influenced by circuit boards. Finally, the vibrant colour palette was chosen to represent the scottish element of the organisation, with the colours based upon a Scottish thistle, sitting against a bright blue sky.

The brand also required a highly adaptive brand system to allow staff the tools to create a wide-variety of branded communications from issuing reports and papers, to presenting and attending various events and conferences.

Quarriers is a leading social care charity that provides practical care and support for thousands of vulnerable children, adults and families across Scotland.

Maguires first worked with Quarriers in 2018, creating the award-winning ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign.

Since then we’ve helped to evolve the campaign, navigating through the filming challenges caused by the pandemic, to ensure this authentic, people-based campaign remains true to its original concept – the best way to promote working for Quarriers is to showcase the people themselves.

This year, the client was keen to showcase the people they care for, alongside a range of their staff, as they go about their daily duties as Support Workers.

Maguires spent several days on location at both adult and child care facilities, capturing a snapshot of day-to-day life at Quarriers.

The client was looking to expand their reach across social channels by including content for TikTok in addition to their usual Instagram and Facebook campaigns. With this in mind, Maguires supplied the marketing team at Quarriers with a number of edits of 15 second ads for both Child Services and Adult Services, so each area could be individually targeted. In addition, we provided longer cuts of each ad for TV and web, alongside a number of static ads for organic and paid-for posts and stories.

Since the start of the first lockdown in March 2020, the Maguires team has worked from home. 

What started as an enforced move has led to a successful and fulfilling new working arrangement. 

One of the unexpected results of this move is the ability for each member of the team to feel closer to their local community. Whether it’s lunches spent locally, taking the dog for a morning walk or doing the school run – we’re all better connected to where we live.

This connection led to a unique collaboration between our Creative Director Chris Hannah and his local community council in Cambuslang. 

After reading in the local press about plans to create a series of murals to brighten up neglected sites across the town, Chris was keen to offer his services free of charge, allowing the Community Council to invest their funds in ways.

Clare Williamson, vice-chair of Cambuslang Community Council and member of the Gateway Group said:

“Since we started doing community surveys in 2015, local residents have been telling us that they want a modern, vibrant, and welcoming environment for the town. Together with our streetscape project, the Gateway artwork is intended to demonstrate our civic pride, and a strong sense of belonging for local residents and businesses who live and work in the town. More importantly, we hope that the project will attract visitors and invite local people to the town centre to support local businesses to keep our town centre thriving for years to come.”

The first mural has been installed at the entrance to Cambuslang Station. Through a number of engagement sessions run by the Community Council, the most popular places and spaces in the town were identified, allowing Chris to develop a series of 12 original illustrations that would form a central part to mural design, now known as ‘The Station Wall’.

The project would also see the completion of two further murals, known as ‘The Sunflower Wall’ and ‘The Welcome Wall’. As these two murals required painting – rather than the printed vinyls boards at the Station Wall – Chris engaged the services of signwriters Artisan Artworks.

The idea for ‘The Sunflower Wall’ mural came from a simple act of kindness. During lockdown, five year old Hamish Shea grew a sunflower from seed and left it in a pot on the town’s main thoroughfare for everyone to enjoy. 

Local residents were so touched by the gesture that Cambuslang Community Council was inspired to create a mural and a permanent seating area with planters in the same spot.

The final mural – ‘The Welcome Wall’ – acts as a vibrant signpost for those entering the town, distinct in its own right, but utilising the same colour palette used across all three murals.

As well as receiving record levels of engagement for the Community Council on social media, the story of Hamish and the Cambuslang murals attracted local and national press coverage.

The Gateway Project is a partnership between Cambuslang Community Council, Cambuslang Rotary Club, Grow 73, Network Rail, Scotrail, National Lottery, Community Rail Partnership, local residents, Maguires Agency, SLC Rutherglen and Cambuslang Area Committee, SLC Ground Services, SLC Unpaid Work Team, SLC Youth Family Community Learning Service.

Having developed the highly successful, and award-winning, ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign for Quarriers, we were faced with a challenge on how to develop the visual content of the campaign during the first National lockdown. As both parties were required to stay at home, aside from an hour’s exercise a day, we had no means of shooting new footage of Quarriers staff in order to create fresh content for this year’s campaign.

We proposed using existing audio tracks of various Quarriers care workers, recorded as part of an earlier radio campaign, as the basis for a reimagined set of animated ads for this years’ social campaign.

By selecting three of the stores, as told by the Quarriers care workers, we create a series of playful animations, using a little ‘creative’ licence in the depiction of the scenes being described.

These three animations were brought to life by the wonderful Donna McAvoy and contained within the existing ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign banner.

We were then able to provide the Quarriers recruitment team with the required creative assets with which to run their unique lockdown recruitment drive via their own social channels.

Quarriers is a leading social care charity that provides practical care and support for thousands of vulnerable children, adults and families across Scotland. They help thousands of people to lead happier, more fulfilling lives. By challenging inequality, Quarriers give vulnerable people more opportunities and, importantly, ensure that their voices are heard.

Maguires were originally appointed in 2018, following a successful pitch, to create a recruitment campaign for Quarriers. Having struggled to fill carer roles through traditional recruitment avenues, the client decided to use a creative advertising campaign to target people interested in a career in care directly.

We created the ‘Care to join us’ campaign. The simple message got right to the point, by identifying the crucial requirement of working for Quarriers – that you really care.

A strong call to action prompts anyone considering a career in caring to find out about available roles via the Quarriers jobs page.

Quarriers were keen to champion their staff in the campaign, so Maguires commissioned and art-directed the photography at Quarrier’s Village using real Quarriers employees. Multiple creative executions were then provided for a far-ranging campaign across outdoor, social, digital, press and radio.

Launching in August 2018, the campaign has resulted in triple the number of visits to the Quarriers site, with the suitability of applicants also increasing to a healthy 1 in 3 being taken on.

The original campaign led to 200 new hires (as of April 2019) and was awarded S1 Jobs ‘Recruitment Campaign of the Year’ 2018.

To build on the success of last year’s campaign, we proposed producing an accompanying film for 2019, to help bring to life the vital work of Quarriers carers.

Once again, the photography and film work was commissioned and directed by Maguires at Quarriers Village, using real Quarriers employees. By featuring the same carers in both the print and film campaign we helped give a wider visibility to the ‘stars’ of the campaign.

The campaign launched in August 2019 across outdoor, social, digital, press and radio.

Following a successful pitch, Maguires were appointed by Stirling Council to create and launch a new brand and marketing campaign for the Stirling area.

The initial stages of the brand development saw us undertake an extensive three-month consultation process, where feedback was gathered from key stakeholders and residents. This process covered both city centre and rural areas, stretching from Crianlarich and Aberfoyle, to Dunblane, Bannockburn and Callander.

The result of this process saw the creation of the brand ‘Stirling: Alive with Scotland’ – illustrating that Stirling is a place where you can find all that is good about Scotland; its history, beauty, ingenuity as well as the wide-ranging opportunities it offers.

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